The Member for times long past Jacob Rees Mogg is one of the most ardent supporters of the hardest possible Brexit, if need be without any agreement with the EU. We should not be unduly concerned at the loss of all those free trade deals. There will be no reason for panic at the thought of the M20 becoming a lorry park. And there will be no problem with maintaining London’s status as a world financial centre.
Indeed, back in 2016, in response to the concern that “Current passporting rules allow banks and other financial services companies who set up their operations in the UK to access the EU market. A report published today by consultancy Oliver Wyman and lobbying body The City UK said that if the UK lost its passporting rights up to 35,000 jobs could be at risk, as well as around £5 billion in tax revenues”, he was distinctly relaxed.
“The importance of passporting is much over-rated … The real advantage of passports is in retail and most of the companies that are involved in retail markets have a person in other European countries anyway. So I would not get too hung up on passporting. Last week Lloyd’s of London said it was 4% of its business, so it’s not that big a fish” was The Great Man’s response. And in any case, passporting rights would be retained.
Or so he told: “When asked why the EU would give the UK passporting rights as part of the negotiations, Rees-Mogg said it has given similar deals to Singapore and the USA, so it would be in line with its policy”. But what a difference two years makes.
Now, it seems passporting rights are not over-rated at all, as the latest issue of Private Eye magazine (#1472, available at all good news outlets for a modest £2) has showed.
Somerset Capital Management, where Rees Mogg still puts in some work time, “relies on ‘passporting’ from the UK’s EU membership to sell in other EU countries. That could all come to an end with Brexit … putting City firms at a big disadvantage. Moves to Paris, Frankfurt, Luxembourg and Dublin can get round that problem”.
So what is Rees Mogg’s outfit doing? “SCM has launched a new investment fund based in Dublin … even though that means submitting to Irish/EU laws and regulations. The MI Somerset Emerging Markets Dividend Growth Feeder Fund was launched in March by Somerset Capital Management ICAV, an Irish collective asset management vehicle or umbrella fund regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland”.
And the killer connection that the Eye has unearthed? “The ICAV sub-fund will feed a master fund, the £1.35bn MI Somerset Emerging Markets Dividend Growth Fund, managed in London by Somerset Capital Management LLP, in which Rees Mogg remains a prominent partner”. Plus the feeder fund’s prospectus makes interesting reading.
This says of Brexit “As the Manager and Investment Manager are based in the UK and a Fund’s investments may be located in the UK or the EU, a Fund may as a result be affected by the events described above”. So much so that Rees Mogg’s outfit found it necessary to open for business somewhere that Passporting will not be affected.
And so the latest exhibition of Brexit hypocrisy was duly nailed.
I have the same amount of sympathy for possible loss of "London's status as a world financial centre[sic]" as that place had for the deliberate destruction of communities elsewhere in the country. At which time and since the social casualties run into millions more than "35,000".
ReplyDeleteWhich is to say No Sympathy Whatsoever.
London has become little more than a corrupt money launderette serviced by willing wannabe spivs, Gordon Gekkos and wilful ignorance.
So if the crunch comes the victims can shuffle into the dole queue or take up casual employment (aka zero hours contracts) like everybody else. Or they can try to take their bullshit somewhere else in Europe - if they'll be allowed in.
In short: Fuck London. God knows they've got it coming.
"In short: Fuck London. God knows they've got it coming."
ReplyDeleteThis is what the Brexiters are relying on the public thinking - fuck the bankers. My question is, how are we going to make this money up to the exchequer? If anyone thinks that there'll be more money for public services after we leave as opposed to "well, we've got to lower taxes to attract the rich" I have a Bridge you might like to view.
All good vengeful stuff but collapse of London financial centre is collapse of pension funds and social security funding. Its the poor who will suffer yet again. We don't have funds stuffed away in Panama etc. Going offshore is not just a tax play.
ReplyDeleteIf we have to depend on money laundering and ponzi schemes for our economy maybe we should go back to making things that are useful to our society and things we can sell abroad. Maybe we should stop shitting ourselves in the face of what amounts to a protection racket. Maybe we should tell the financial hoodlums and two-bit suits to take themselves elsewhere - shyster New York springs to mind.
ReplyDeleteSooner or later the whole disgusting charade is going to implode anyway. If you think 2008 was bad - and we've had ten years of bullshit "austerity" so far because of it - wait until the next bust has you perched on the toilet wondering (yet again) where it all went wrong. That'll be the bust "socialist" Gordon Brown said he'd abolished. And that was just months before Western economies went down the toilet courtesy of the gang of charlatans and liars who infest Canary Wharf, Whitehall and Westminster.
All of which had sweet FA to do with Brexit or Remain.
Once you've seen one anti-London unhinging, you've seen 'em all.
ReplyDeleteRees-Mogg is a vile man who would happily bring all the towns and cities of the country to rubble if he could profit off it. I wish he was bombarded with hundreds of novel villains based on him in future.
ReplyDeleteMuch of the City of London is a den of iniquity, bedeviled by charlatans, spivs, sociopaths and psychoaths whacked out on coke, fast cars and girls.
ReplyDeleteTo hand over your economy to those who are ahem nothing more than snakes on suits shows that the politicians in charge are a) Stupid, B) stupid and lazy or c) stupid, lazy and corrupt. You choose.
Now bankers will find out what the bitter taste of betrayal by their supposed supporters is very soon. There will be no sympathy from up North.
Once we will built things like ships, cars, motorcycles, solar panels, trains and things for spaceships... But Maggie didn't like the workers getting good money because they belong to Trade Unions so she made Britian the spiv and poundshop catial of the world.